The art of laser writers continually places demands on the speed at which the rise and fall times of driving pulses can be generated by a laser driver for activating a laser beam, either for reading or for writing a recording mark on a storage device, such as a CD. The second demand that the writer imposes on a laser driver is that very fast synchronized READ, WRITE, and BOOST current pulses need to be generated. Prior art laser drivers do not incorporate sources of READ, WRITE, and BOOST current pulses in one ASIC chip to supply an output driver stage. More specifically, prior art laser drivers do not have a single output driver stage driven by multiple reference currents and associated logic inputs. Therefore, prior art laser drivers have undesirable delay times between BOOST.fwdarw.WRITE and WRITE.fwdarw.READ pulses. Additionally, when there is more than one output driver stage to be turned "on", there is an inherent delay and a longer rise time to turn a separate output driver stage "on" than would be experienced by turning an active ("already on") driver "on" harder.
Also, since it is important to quiet the laser, particularly at higher speeds, it is desirable to maximize the amplitude of the high frequency injection signal (HFI) that is delivered to the laser. The HFI signal is used to quiet the laser and prevent mode hopping. Traditionally, the HFI logic and its associated oscillating transistor were not part of the laser driver. Hence, prior art systems suffered from a diminishment in the amplitude of the HFI signal because of the distance that the signal had to pass before reaching the laser. This in turn provided a less than efficient reduction in laser noise. Traditionally, HFI circuits are derived from a Colpitt's circuit which has the characteristic of changing the amplitude of its output signal when the oscillator frequency is changed, and visa versa. Also, prior art oscillators are inherently sensitive to passive substrate parasitics. It is therefore the intent of the present invention to minimize and/or to eliminate the aforementioned problems.